Bangladesh: Rohingya Refugee Students Expelled | WPN World People News

The Bangladeshi government has expelled scores of Rohingya refugee children from schools in southeast Bangladesh since late January 2019, Human Rights Watch said on April 1,2019. Officials have ordered secondary schools near the refugee settlements in the Cox’s Bazar district to dismiss Rohingya students, who lack Bangladeshi citizenship.

The Bangladesh government should cease the expulsions of Rohingya refugee students from schools and ensure that all children are able to receive a formal education.

“The Bangladeshi government’s policy of tracking down and expelling Rohingya refugee students instead of ensuring their right to education is misguided, tragic, and unlawful,” said Bill Van Esveld, senior children’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Education is a basic human right. The solution to children feeling compelled to falsify their identities to go to secondary school isn’t to expel them but to let them get the education they deserve.”

The expelled students were born in Bangladesh after their parents fled Myanmar as refugees in the early 1990s. They were not allowed to enroll in Bangladeshi schools. They attended non-formal primary schools in refugee camps but had no access to secondary education that would let them go to a university or even become an accredited high school graduate. So Rohingya families paid for Bangladeshi birth certificates or obtained other documents to allow their children to pass as Bangladeshi nationals in order to continue their education.

Human Rights Watch interviewed 13 Rohingya refugee students, including 4 girls, who were expelled from six secondary schools on January 23 and 28, and February 14, when school administrators went to each classroom and read out a government-issued notice ordering their expulsion.

The students are among the 34,000 registered Rohingya refugees living in camps in the Teknaf and Ukhiya sub-districts, in Cox’s Bazar. Their legal status is distinct from the 740,000 Rohingya who fled Myanmar since August 2017 and the estimated 200,000 who had escaped previous crackdowns by Myanmar’s military. Bangladesh does not formally recognize these latter groups as refugees or permit them to access any formal education. However, under international human rights law applicable to Bangladesh, all children, including refugees, have an equal right to education.

In November 2018, the Prime Minister’s Office raised concerns about Rohingya children attending Bangladeshi secondary schools, leading to a government investigation. On January 23, the Bangladeshi official responsible for refugee issues in Cox’s Bazar sent a notice to the directors of seven secondary schools in Teknaf and a government official in Ukhiya. The notice, viewed by Human Rights Watch, warns that “the rate of Rohingya students attending school has been increasing,” that “dishonest public representatives” have helped them obtain Bangladeshi documents, and that the number of Rohingya refugees “is increasing day by day.” It also states:

We were informed by the intelligence agencies under the Prime Minister’s Office that Rohingya children are attending different educational institutions in Teknaf sub-district. It is ordered … to take strict measures so that no Rohingya children can attend any Bangladeshi educational institutions outside of the camps.

A Rohingya community leader told Human Rights Watch that police, intelligence, and other officials visited four Bangladeshi secondary schools in the Teknaf sub-district on January 15 and 16 and ordered them to expel Rohingya students. The founder of Leda High School said intelligence officials warned him that having Rohingya students was “not safe for the country, not safe for our people,” Reuters reported.

School officials knew which students were Rohingya or could find out by examining their enrollment records for their parents’ names and addresses, parents and refugee leaders told Human Rights Watch.

The notice lists the names, secondary schools, parents’ names, and refugee-camp addresses of 44 Rohingya students, including 13 girls, and orders schools to expel them and other Rohingya students. Six Rohingya students who had been in grades 9 and 10 at various schools but had been expelled said that all 89 of their Rohingya classmates were expelled, although they did not know the total number expelled from all classes. A Reuters report said 64 students had been expelled from one school. About 470 Rohingya students from one refugee camp had been enrolled in Bangladeshi schools, with some still at risk of expulsion, a Rohingya camp representative said.

Bangladesh has provided no legal pathway for Rohingya refugee children to attend school, and prohibits them from receiving formal education in the camps or enrolling in schools outside the camps. One student said his family borrowed and saved for months to pay 3,500 taka (US$42) to buy a Bangladeshi birth certificate. Another said he had to pretend his parents were dead to avoid reporting their refugee camp address on his school application and convinced a Bangladeshi teacher to pretend to be his uncle with a gift of fruit worth 1,000 taka (US$12).

“If education is for all,” said an expelled Rohingya student, “education should be for Rohingya.”

“As long as Rohingya refugee children aren’t able to obtain a formal education in the camps, Bangladesh should allow them to enroll in local schools,” Van Esveld said. “The government should stop thwarting Rohingya students’ right to learn.”

Source:Human Rights Watch